“From this hour,” said Leon looking his wife full in the face, “understand that everything in this house is changed. Henceforth I find that I must absolutely interfere with your proceedings and snatch you, either with or against your will, from the monstrous course of life into which you have drifted; I must cure you, as mad people are cured, by removing you as far as possible from the influences that have occasioned your madness. My long suffering has been fatal to us both; but now my determination, which will border I warn you on tyranny—and by no fault of mine—is to straighten somewhat the crooked paths in which you have chosen to walk.”
“I am resigned to endure,” said María with the hypocritical unction she had learnt to display. “I will drink the cup you force to my lips. What is it to be? What do you require of me? Will you kill me; or is your cruelty more refined? Will you force me to renounce the habits of piety that I have formed? Do you mean to make me abjure my faith?”
“I have no desire that you should abjure your faith.... No, what I want is something quite different. Woe is me!”
He turned away as though he really did not know what he wanted. In point of fact while María was calm and played the part of the victim to admiration, Leon was disturbed, and hesitated in his part of executioner.
“I do not wish to have any discussion with you to-night,” he said. “We have fought too long without result, but now it strikes me that some definite action on my part may rescue us from this hideous state of things. Forgive me if instead of giving you explanations I threaten you, if instead of arguing I command, if instead of answering you I say nothing.”
“What do you require? Tell me at once.”
“I am going to leave Madrid.”
“Why? Are you tired of theatres, bull-fights, clubs, and atheistical meetings? Ah! if you leave this it will not be to live in a desert but to go to Paris, or London, or Germany!”
“You forsook and neglected me,” said Leon sadly. “You avoided me and flung me back upon the frivolities of society; you, entrenched in your impeccability, have destroyed all that might have been the joy and comfort of my life and have made my home the abode of misery.”